At 09:05 AM 8/7/2010, Marshall Eubanks wrote: >Dear Noel; > >On Aug 6, 2010, at 9:26 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote: > >>> From: Bob Hinden <bob.hinden@xxxxxxxxx> >> >>> I do note that it seems clear that registration is related to where >>> we meet. That show up pretty clearly the current data. So judging >>> where to have future meetings based on past participation will tend >>> to keep us where we used to meet. >>> ... >>> I think an important part of the meeting rotation is to equalize the >>> travel cost/pain for most attendees. >> >> The last makes some sense, but I wonder about the 'local attendees' >> affect. Clearly you will always get a goodly number of people from the >> location where the meeting is, but how far does the 'continental' effect >> reach in that breakdown? > >We do have some data on this point - the day pass experiment (DPE) has shown pretty conclusively IMO that the IETF >does not get a lot of truly local ad-hoc participants. Most day pass attendees appear to be regular attendees who could only make it to that particular IETF for one day for whatever reason, not local people who just wanted to sample an IETF meeting. > >It has long been known that IETF meetings have a local attendance effect. I thought, before the DPE, that this indicated a potentially large number of observers, presumably interested, but not interested enough to travel long distances due to the cost and time required for longer trips. This, to me, suggested that day-passes, at a reduced rate, would bring out a lot of new people (as the time and financial burden would be even less). This did not happen, on any of the 3 continents where the DPE has been run. > >So, I now assume that the "local attendees" are people who are seriously interested and involved in the IETF, able to travel in-region or in-country but unable to get approval, funds or time for week-long international travel. I hate to be blunt, but this reasoning appears seriously flawed. None of the last 3 sites have been what I would consider "convenient" for drop ins. Had these been in say San Jose, or DC, or London or Tokyo I might agree, but not for the sites actually chosen. When you get to a certain distance from your home, a day pass makes no economic nor time commitment sense - better to attend the most of the week (or at least a couple of days), do your working group meetings, attend the plenaries and have dinner with your colleagues (or the folks you just met in the WG meeting) than try and fly in on one day, do a 1-2 hour WG and then decamp. I've done that - but its not the best use of my time. I mean really - is Maastricht such a hot bed of Internet design activity that you would expect 20-30 locals to show up? And being 2 hours from Brussels and 3 from Amsterdam, I wouldn't expect to pick up any day pass folk from there. I forget what your numbers showed, but weren't most of the day pass folk previous attendees? I wouldn't generally expect first-timers to use a day pass. Mostly, they don't understand what an IETF meeting is like (and generally don't believe us when we tell them). Many of the first timers I've met over the years are surprised there aren't more instructional sessions - they're thinking symposium, not working meeting - and they're here for the whole learning experience. I would expect day passes to be more attractive to a repeat attendee involved in a specific working group who has other time commitments dragging him away from the site (work, family, etc). Mike _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf